The Eight-Hour Day That Was Amended to Death
A bold proposal to limit public works labor to eight hours faces a grim fate in the Washington State Senate, where 'amendments' have stripped the bill of its power before it can even reach the House.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Senate yesterday passed Kinnear's bill providing that eight hours shall constitute a day's labor on public works, but passed it with amendments which render its passage by the House improbable, and which, if it does become a law, will render it inoperative from the day that it is placed on the statute books.
The idea of attempting to make eight hours constitute a day's work in Washington, while ten hours of the same labor constitute a day's work in Oregon, in Idaho, in California and in every other state, is chimerical in the extreme. The Washington farmer, manufacturer or tradesman cannot hope to compete with his Oregon neighbor if he pays the same amount for eight hours' work as the latter pays for ten. Under such circumstances, either the price of a day's labor in Washington will be reduced one-fifth or the Washington employer will go to the wall. From such an alternative there would be, in the nature of things, no escape.
Such merit as Kinnear's bill had has been amended out of it, and the House should either restore it to its original form or put it to sleep.
This 1893 editorial captures a classic labor struggle: the tension between worker welfare and regional economic competitiveness. Today, debates over minimum wage hikes and overtime protections still hinge on similar fears of job loss or business flight versus the necessity of fair compensation for time worked.
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